


Why ‘I love you’ didn’t matter

by hydroxidecookie



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 07:00:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17381879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydroxidecookie/pseuds/hydroxidecookie
Summary: Carol had taught her to read love in the nothings that hid everythings.An exploration of the unique ways Carol expressed her love for Therese, without needing to say it. Draws influence from both the book and the movie.





	Why ‘I love you’ didn’t matter

They were not a couple who felt the need to frequently exchange ‘I love you’s. 

Before Carol, she’d thought love would come in the form of a grand declaration that would sweep her off her feet. But being with Carol had taught Therese how to read love. She only had to watch Carol, as she often did, and suddenly she would find herself luxuriating in it. If she absolutely had to describe it, It was an almost physical sensation—Carol’s unspoken love washing over her, seeping bone-deep into her limbs and settling like it had always been there.

Carol had taught her to read love in the nothings that hid everythings.

  
Long before Carol had said the words, she had known that Carol loved her, even when she had tried desperately not to show it. The barely perceptible  tremor of her hands—and her voice—as they settled onto Therese’s shoulders. The childlike way her eyes would widen as she asked Therese questions about herself, eagerly awaiting the answer. And after that, the inevitable way she would catch herself—again adopting the sultry hooding of her eyes. Carol, perennially playing the part of the mysterious, skilled temptress.    


But Therese always _knew_.  Those beautiful, expressive eyes always betrayed her. She especially loved the way Carol would look at others with that inattentive society lady almost-smile, then turn back to Therese with her eyes crinkling and mouth lifted in a conspiratorial smirk.  _ Their  _ conspiratorial smirk. She even loved the way Carol turned to her, fast and eager. She would always justify it afterwards as the boredom she felt talking to yet another vacuous stranger, but Therese knew that wasn’t the only reason. 

There were other things—many others, really. The kisses, as gentle and languid as a mother’s would be, yet somehow also containing a longing Therese would reflect in the fervid kisses she returned. The way her tongue shaped the word ‘darling’ almost mindlessly, always lovingly. That tongue again, curling in and out of her teasingly but never cruelly. The way they could talk until dawn rose, and afterwards Carol would complain sleepily but she would be smiling through it.

Once, Carol had asked her what she thought of love. Carol had always thought the young like her had the oddest ideas. Therese had tried to explain all she’d learnt since meeting Carol in her own halting way, and where Carol may have smiled her elegant condescending smile and talked of the queer notions the young get, she had instead studied Therese with a silent intensity. And so Therese knew that Carol felt the same, had always felt the same way she herself now did about love.

 

—

 

The day that they had met in the bar at the Ritz, Carol had finally said ‘I love you’, but the words were inconsequential; they came second to the expressions playing out on her face, vulnerable and open in a way Therese had never seen. Carol hadn’t needed to say the words at all, because Therese could see them a thousand times over in the anxious set of her face, the ever-expressive eyes that silently implored her to accept, the momentary biting of the coral-red lips—all the little signs that only Therese in the entire world could see. 

On another person, it might have seemed pathetic, but this was Carol, and it only made Therese’s heart hammer in a new, exciting way. 

She looked at Carol, again seeing that face that she had never seen before, and got the strangest feeling that it was a face that she had seen over and over again in the past, in the future, and in a million fragmented realities. This was Carol, achingly familiar, and this was someone completely new. The familiar rush of love settled deep into her bones and she knew it had never really left. It made her head go light.

 

—

 

_ Letter from Therese to Carol, a week before moving _

My dearest Carol,

When you asked me to move in with you, I said no despite how I felt. The true reason still boggles my own mind. Perhaps some cruel part of me wanted you to beg—You, so strikingly beautiful, always wearing that casually arrogant smile I nevertheless  came to love. No, I know now that I couldn’t have wanted that. The very thought is too amazing to consider. 

I was so afraid then that you hadn’t seen how much I wanted to be convinced to stay, hadn’t heard the indecision in my voice. What if you didn’t love me as much as I loved you, and couldn’t tell how I really felt? There was a burning in me then, not only in my heart but in every cell of my being. I know you’d laugh at the ideas I get, but that was the way I felt then, my entire body alight with anticipation at seeing you again, yet also thundering with the fear of how you would respond. 

I needn’t have feared, because when your eyes found me in that room—that was when I really understood what you meant by  _ release _ . For when you looked at me, I saw the aching depth of longing in your eyes, and the way they then slowly flickered up my body, as if you were hardly daring to hope. In that instant, you showed me that to release without expectation—to release when every step away was agony—took infinite love and courage. I couldn’t—not even now—believe you felt such love for me. In that instant, you taught me love all over again.

I knew it then, without a sliver of doubt—even if you never again told me you loved me, it would not matter.

I do not know if I will be brave enough to send you this. It poured out from somewhere deep and strange enough maybe even you wouldn’t understand. But you have often told me you admire my courage, and I of course admire yours greatly, so maybe I shall, and you can take from it what you will.

Therese

  
—  
  


_ It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell. _ —The Price of Salt 

**Author's Note:**

> uhh this is my first Carol fic so I am very very sorry if it’s bad?? I just really love the book and movie. Please give me feedback if you can, no matter good or bad :)


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